Intelligent Design; it’s a Wrap says New Study.

In the short space of seventy years society in the west moved from the idea that belief in a creator God was the only rational choice to make, to now; where that same proposition is an irrational one.

Yes there are reasons for that stunning about-turn, but that is not the purpose of this piece; rather it is to focus on the mind blowing issue of Intelligent Design.

And design is the operative word here folks as you’ll see.

Here is something to consider. Is it possible that new findings in the field of systematic biology might change perceptions and cause the pendulum to swing back? Nah I can’t see it; but at least it could give pause for a rethink.

Transcription is the biochemical process that occurs in every cell in the human body when protein synthesis is initiated. It is a complex series of steps that begin in the nucleus when a gene, a section on a strand of DNA, expresses instructions for a specific protein to be produced.

In simple terms, the portion of the DNA molecule where the gene is located is unzipped resulting in a strand of mRNA (messenger RNA). mRNA can be thought of as a digital tape that contains a sequence of 3-letter codes called codons that dictate the precise sequence of amino acids for the protein it produces.

The mRNA leaves the nucleus and enters the site of protein synthesis called a ribosome. It is here that the codons are read and the specific amino acids are delivered by a second RNA molecule, tRNA (transfer RNA) which has its own 3-letter sequences called anti-codons that match the codons on the mRNA.

The process then continues; the ribosome carries on assembling the amino acids one-by-one until the protein has been assembled; according to the instructions originally encoded on the gene.

To say this process is spectacular in its complexity is an understatement; in actual fact it is miraculous.

This year’s August edition of Chemical and Engineering News details the 20-plus year effort to understand how the process of transcription takes-off; and it involves ongoing research by specialists in their relevant fields all around the world.

They discovered something they call a preinitiation complex (PIC); an ensemble of transcription factors, an enzyme called RNA polymerase II (Pol II), more transcription factors, and a mediator complex that stabilizes the structure; and in all about 75 different proteins.

In order to image the PIC, it first had to be produced. This entailed building on years of painstaking work by research teams that not only established methods for isolating all of the PIC’s protein components in the lab; but to coax those pieces into assembling in just the right way, without the whole complex falling apart.

Aside from the hugely complicated feat of engineering slash chemistry slash biology at work here; there is a deeper philosophical question to all of this.

How can such a complex molecular machine, crucial for the synthesis of proteins and hence life, be itself dependent on 75 different proteins for its function?

Where did those proteins come from in the first place if there was no PIC to initiate protein synthesis?

It’s similar to that question what came first, the chicken or the egg?

Douglas Axe, the author of Undeniable, How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed, believes that it is examples such as this that make it obvious life was designed; and not the result of blind, unguided chance.

He gives an example of what he dubs “oracle soup,” where he pokes at the idea of a primordial soup, the “warm little pond” believed to be the birthplace of life on planet Earth that Darwin described in a letter to his friend, Joseph Hooker in 1871.

Indeed Axe’s recipe calls for a large pot of broth and pasta letters, brought to a boil and then removed from the heat and allowed to cool.

When the soup has cooled, …Lift the lid to reveal a complete set of instructions for building something new and useful, worthy of a patent in fact; all spelled out in pasta letters.

Dr John Patrick was once challenged to a debate on the origins of life. Always one to take up a dare he wrote in Spanish on the lecture theatre blackboard; this sentence wrote itself.

Doctors and medical students debated the curious statement for a few minutes then Dr Patrick erased the phrase ‘This sentence’ and replaced it with DNA, saying; “But you all believe this statement, don’t you?”

There was complete silence in the room to his elegant riposte; but point made, over and out.

Belief in God as the Intelligent Designer was the starting point for much of scientific enquiry through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the assumption that a rational mind with a will had created the universe gave rise to two ideas; contingency and intelligibility, which in turn became a powerful impetus to study nature.

But the faith science combo became passé during the mid-nineteenth century with the writings of Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud; dubbed, “the four bearded God-killers”.

Venki Ramakrishnan one of three collaborators awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2009 for studies in the function and structure of the ribosome has said:

How life began is one of the great remaining mysteries of biology… the problem [is] that in nearly all forms of life, DNA [carries] genetic information but DNA itself [is] inert and made by a large number of protein enzymes, which [require] not only RNA but also the ribosome to make these enzymes.

Moreover, the sugar in DNA, deoxyribose, [is] made from ribose by a large, complicated protein. Nobody [can] understand how the whole system could have started.

It makes this verse resonate more than ever; where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.

What is clear is that science can no longer afford not to understand.